Related papers: Cosmic Background Radiation and `ether-drift' expe…
Quantum nonlocality would naturally fit into a version of relativity with a preferred reference system. However, acceptance of this idea has traditionally required experimental evidence. Namely, detecting in laboratory a small angular…
Modern ether-drift experiments in vacuum could in principle detect the tiny refractive index that, in a flat-space picture of gravity, is appropriate for an apparatus placed on the Earth's surface. In this picture, in fact, if there were a…
We present a fully model-independent analysis of the extensive observations reported by a recent ether-drift experiment in Berlin. No a priori assumption is made on the nature of a hypothetical preferred frame. We find a remarkable…
The purpose of the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) experiments is to measure the temperature anisotropy via the autocorrelation function. The partial wave $l_1$ corresponding to the first Doppler peak caused by baryon-photon oscillations…
According to several authors, gravity might be a long-wavelength phenomenon emerging in some 'hydrodynamic limit' from the same physical, flat-space vacuum viewed as a form of superfluid medium. In this framework, light might propagate in…
Observations of the Cosmic Microwave background have provided many of the most powerful constraints we have on cosmology and events in the early universe. The spectrum and isotropy of CBR have long been a pillar of Big Bang models. The…
In principle, by accepting the idea of a non-zero vacuum energy, the physical vacuum of present particle physics might represent a preferred reference frame. By treating this quantum vacuum as a relativistic medium, the non-zero…
The condensation of elementary quanta and their macroscopic occupation of the same quantum state, say k=0 in some reference frame Sigma, is the essential ingredient of the degenerate vacuum of present-day elementary particle physics. This…
Correlating ether-drift measurements in laboratory and CMB observations in space would confirm the existence of a preferred reference frame. To this end, however, the velocity of light in the interferometers cannot be the same parameter 'c'…
Extensive, accurate imaging of the Cosmic Background Radiation temperature anisotropy at sub--degree angular resolution is widely recognized as one of the most crucial goals for cosmology and astroparticle physics in the next decade. We…
We report results on an ``one-way light path'' laser diffraction experiment as a function of the laser beam alignment relative to the Earth's velocity vector obtained by COBE measurements of the Doppler shift in the cosmic microwave…
In this paper we analyze the possibility of detecting nontrivial quantum phenomena in observations of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation (CBR), for example, if the Universe could be found in a coherent…
Galactic magnetic fields are observed of order $\sim 10^{-6}G$, but their origin is not definitely known yet. In this paper we consider the primordial magnetic fields generated in the early universe and analyse their effects on the density…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), especially of its frequency spectrum and its anisotropies, both in temperature and in polarization, have played a key role in the development of modern cosmology and our understanding…
Searches for anisotropies due to Earth's motion relative to a preferred frame -- modern versions of the Michelson-Morley experiment -- provide precise verifications of special relativity. We describe other tests, independent of this motion,…
According to some authors, gravity might be an emergent phenomenon in a fundamentally flat space-time. In this case the speed of light in the vacuum would not coincide exactly with the basic parameter "c" entering Lorentz transformations…
We review the physical processes that are thought to produce anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on the effects of acoustic waves in the early Universe. We attempt throughout to supply an…
Motivated by the critical remarks of several authors, we have re-analyzed the classical ether-drift experiments with the conclusion that the small observed deviations should not be neglected. In fact, within the framework of Lorentzian…
In the light of recent experimental and theoretical data, we go back to the studies tackled in previous publications [1] and develop some of their consequences. Some of their main aspects will be studied in further detail. Yet this text…
The theoretical basis for the prediction of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background is very well developed. Very low amplitude density and temperature perturbations produce small gravitational effects, leading to an anisotropy that…